Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

The church says Earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence in a shadow than the church.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.

Sunday, January 05, 2014

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which is about equidistant from the Thurber story and the old Danny Kaye film, which was pretty removed from Thurber itself. I enjoyed it; Ben Stiller has always been one of my favorite actors even though there was a time I couldn't say I liked any of the movies he was in. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug... well, it was enjoyable enough, though the action sequences were too long and what the hell is this Kili-Tauriel subplot? In fact, what is this Legolas-Tauriel stuff? Tolkien didn't do romance - there were some very bare bones in LOTR that you could hang a decent story on (I think Jackson & Co much improved the Aragorn-Éowyn-Faramir story), but there was nothing in the book of The Hobbit to justify this, and a great deal not to. (Plus, red hair on an Elf?) But: Smaug. Smaaaaauuuuuggg. So lovely. Yes.

DVD: A couple of the Warner Oland "Charlie Chan" movies.

TV: Some first-season Leverage, back when they were all getting used to each other, and Nate was drinking so much. An old movie with Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty Grable called How to Marry a Millionaire; Bacall stole what is actually a fairly funny film.

Read: A mystery called No Stone Unturned, the first of a series I will not be reading any more of, as there was not a character in it I liked, a faint whiff of homophobia pervaded the story, and the narrator was given to incredibly stupid actions. Also, cops roughing up witnesses, yay? Started Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan, but was unable to get past the first section. It's an over-the-top, overblown, frenetic assertion that Barrie exerted some sort of Svengali-like "malign power" over of the Du Maurier family, filled with breathless accusations in the "but why would he commit suicide when he was so successful??" and "does this sound like a man 'destroyed' by the war?" vein and based on precious little fact. There is a great deal of "must have" and "probably" in the telling. When Dudgeon writes that Arthur Davies repressed his anger at Barrie's influence with his, Davies's, wife until it turned into cancer, well... please.So I've picked up another Asey Mayo to cleanse my palate.

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About Me

I used to teach Russian and Ukrainian, and some basic English, to civil servants. Now I teach Russian at a local continued-learning institute. I dabble in Gaelic and Welsh. I'm am amateur photographer and I love birding (in a small way). I'm a Progressive, and a Freethinker, and I know Evolution is a fact - that's FCD, Friend of Charles Darwin (look down the sidebar). I read a lot, and follow women's college basketball. Also I love astronomy, though I'm a rank amateur at it. Most of all, I like living in the reality-based community...

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You cannot leave. You cannot drop the armor now. Why? Because you are needed, more than ever. You are mandatory to keep the energy flowing, the karmic vibrator buzzing, to keep the progressive and lucid half of the nation breathing and healthy and awake and ever reaching out to the half that's wallowing in fear and violence and homophobia and sexual dread, hoping to find harmony instead of cacophony, common ground instead of civil war, some sort of a shared love of a country so messy and internationally disrespected and openly confused its own president can't even speak the language.

After all, you don't hand over all your children the first time the flying monkeys bang on your door...

It's far from over. The tunnel is just a little darker -- and longer -- than we imagined.
Mark Morford